Multi-Speed Parties and Representation: The Evolution of Party Affiliation in Germany

Abstract

In the last two decades party membership numbers have declined in many parliamentary democracies, including in Germany. This article investigates how German parties have reacted to their losses, considering both the domestic and wider implications of their evolving responses. Their approaches include introducing multi-speed affiliation options, and providing new opportunities for members to affect party decisions. These changes are not unique to Germany, but they may have special meaning here, because the Federal Republic’s constitutional tradition treats membership-based political parties as key engines of representative democracy. The German parties’ experiences illustrate how membership losses can spur organisational experimentation, including in ways that have the potential to boost partisan political participation both within and around the parties.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thank you to Thomas Poguntke for his advice on the article, and to Anna Halstenbach for her assistance in gathering some of the data used in this article. All mistakes are my own.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan E. Scarrow is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston (USA). Her research in comparative politics focuses on political parties, political finance and representation; she is also co-director of the Political Party Database project. Her recent publications include Beyond Party Members (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Organizing Political Parties: Representation, Participation, and Power (Oxford University Press, 2017, co-editor).

Notes

1. Exemplified by the influential scholarship and jurisprudence of Gerhard Leibholz.

2. Party rules differ widely in regard to the hurdles for triggering ballots, ranging from signatures of 5 per cent of the membership in the relatively small FDP and Greens, to one-third of the members in the much larger CDU and CSU.

3. For instance, to vote in the 2012 Alliance 90/Greens ballot new members had to join within two weeks of the announcement of the ballot. The 2009 SPD election in Baden-Württemberg was unusual in allowing new members to enlist and participate up to the date that postal ballots were mailed.

4. Postal voting is the most frequent procedure, sometimes supplemented with opportunities to vote at local polling stations. However, in some cases in-person voting has been the only way to participate.

5. The lowest turnout, in Bremen, was for an election without postal or internet voting.

6. Another factor that contributes to this legitimacy and growing use is that German parties have demonstrated the administrative capacity to conduct fair internal elections, so that the intra-party ballots produce clear and uncontested results. The SPD ballot in Hamburg in 2007 was a so far singular but cautionary example of electoral incompetence or electoral fraud, and a case where the ballot aggravated intra-party fissures rather than helping to bridge them. In this election, almost 1000 postal ballots went missing, forcing the party to declare the membership ballot invalid.

7. For a more extensive discussion of this cross-national trend, see Scarrow (2014), Gauja (2015), Faucher (2015).

8. On the failed SPD reforms of 2011, see Klug (2012, 160–174).

9. For more on the contributions of party members, see Scarrow (1994, 41–60).

10. For more on the comparative role of party members as contributors to party finances, see Nassmacher (2009).

11. As was evident in the party organisational reforms advocated – with only partial success – by SPD and CDU leaders in 2015. See also the proposals advocated by the party reform group sponsored by party foundations associated with the CDU and the B90/Greens: http://parteireform.org/ (accessed March 2018).